The ‘sanatorium’ where Viktor Yanukovych reportedly took refuge puts most luxury resorts to shame

News that ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has fled to a Kremlin sanatorium just outside Moscow might conjure up images of grey walls, dour doctors, locked doors and straitjackets. But Barvikha sanatorium is not out of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Instead, Barvikha and the surrounding area is home to the Russian elite, the intelligentsia, the nouveaux riches, and the suddenly deposed.

Amid soaring pine forests, mansions and gorgeous dachas sit on well-tended, extensive grounds behind well-guarded gates. Russian President Vladimir Putin is said to have a home in Barvikha, which is only 30 minutes from Red Square

Stores at the Barvikha Luxury Village include Prada, Giorgio Armani, Gucci, Ralph Lauren and Dolce & Gabbana, while those looking for a new set of wheels can try the Lamborghini, Ferrari or Bentley dealers.

In the grounds of the exclusive Barvikha sanatorium is Meiendorf Castle, an old tsarist hunting lodge that resembles a medieval castle and is now an official presidential residence. The castle hosts international summits and foreign leaders.

According to Stephen Armstrong’s book, The Super-Rich Shall Inherit the Earth, it was amid the sumptuous surroundings of Meiendorf Castle that Russia’s frightened oligarchs gathered in 2008 after a financial crisis saw the tycoon’s lose almost $300-billion. It was over dinner that then president Dmitry Medvedev agreed to loans them billions to save their fortunes.

Meanwhile, the sanatorium appears to be the first stop of leaders who suddenly find themselves in need of refuge.

In 2005, an angry mob stormed the palace of Askar Akayev, the president of Kyrgyzstan.

“I left in the suit I was standing up in,” Mr. Akayev told a journalist soon after being deposed. Within days he was at the Barvikha sanatorium.

Borislav Milosevic, the brother of Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian leader who was accused of war crimes and who died in 2006, lives in Barvikha, as does the former leader’s widow, Mirjana Markovic, and son, Marko Milosevic.

The New York Times reported that Barvikha was home to half a dozen or so deposed leaders and members of their families. In 2012, it suggested that it might also provide a refuge in the future for Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

“The Russians have experience with getting heads of state out in the nick of time,” Mark Katz, a professor of government and politics at George Mason University in Virginia told the Times in 2012.

It certainly appears to be the case with Mr. Yanukovych who fled months of protests in Ukraine that had turned deadly.